#Texas SB-8

[coochiequeens]

No one in the article is saying it but he sounds pissed that his plan to baby trap her failed so he's using legal means to keep a connection with her.

A Texas man is seeking a court order so he can depose a woman he was dating who traveled to Colorado to get an abortion, in a case that may have ramifications in the ongoing legal battles over abortion rights.

Collin Davis, a resident of Brazos County, filed a legal petition in March stating that on February 20 — the day after he learned the woman intended to obtain the abortion — he retained an attorney, who sent the woman a letter requesting that she preserve all records related to her plans to terminate the pregnancy.

According to the petition, the letter warned that he “would pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child.”

Davis argues that the deposition is necessary to determine whether there was a violation of the Texas wrongful-death statute, which the petition references alongside a Texas civil code that includes among those defined as individuals “an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.” His petition additionally points to Texas’ civil enforcement six-week abortion ban, known as SB 8.

The woman filed a petition for court records to be sealed so her identity would remain anonymous, her attorney told CNN. She began dating Davis in November 2023 and found out that she was pregnant in January, according to the petition.

The case, which was reported on by The Washington Post on Friday, is being cited by abortion rights supporters who fear that anti-abortion advocates will use — or at least threaten to use — strict abortion laws to target abortions obtained even in states where the procedure is legal. Texas’ law, passed in 2021, targets doctors and those involved in facilitating abortions, not the women who undergo the procedure themselves, but opponents say that legal uncertainty about restrictions in a post-Roe America has the intended consequence of intimidating women.

Davis is seeking the deposition to obtain information about those involved in the abortion, including the identity of the doctor who performed the procedure in Colorado, and he considers filing a lawsuit against all of them, according to the court filings.

Davis is being represented by Jonathan Mitchell, a well-known lawyer and abortion rights opponent who also represented former President Donald Trump in his Colorado ballot case.

Mitchell helped craft SB 8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, which uses a novel civil enforcement mechanism to prohibit abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, a point usually around six weeks into a pregnancy. Davis cited the law in his petition for the deposition.

CNN has reached out to Davis for comment.

Mitchell said in a statement, “Fathers of aborted fetuses can sue for wrongful death in states with abortion bans, even if the abortion occurs out-of-state. They can sue anyone who paid for the abortion, anyone who aided or abetted the travel, and anyone involved in the manufacture or distribution of abortion drugs.”

Critics decry legal maneuvers

The case is seen by some abortion rights advocates as an example of the new legal landscape facing women who wish to obtain an abortion, even by legal means.

“We don’t think there is a basis (for a lawsuit),” Marc Hearron, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the woman, told CNN. “It is perfectly legal to leave Texas or any state and go get an abortion in a state where it is legal. And it is perfectly legal to help someone or be involved in someone going out of state and obtaining an abortion where it is allowed by law.”

Nancy Northup, president & CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade “opened the door to this kind of frightening and unacceptable fearmongering and harassment by one citizen against another.”

Mitchell has spearheaded other legal efforts in the wake of Texas’ abortion law. Last June, he represented a man who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against three friends of his ex-wife who allegedly assisted her in terminating her pregnancy with abortion medication, in an early legal test of the reach of wrongful death statutes in the wake of Roe’s reversal. That case has not yet been resolved.

It’s unclear whether Davis’ petition could lead to a lawsuit against the woman, said Drexel University Law Professor David Cohen.

“I definitely don’t think there is a basis for this,” he said. “But we have no confidence to know exactly what the Texas courts will say anymore, at any level.”

Other Republican-led states have sought to pressure women against seeking abortions in other states, particularly minors. Idaho’s legislature last year passed a bill — later blocked by a judge over constitutionality concerns — that would prohibit adults from helping minors cross state lines to get an abortion without parental permission. Meanwhile, Tennessee’s legislature is advancing a law that would similarly criminalize so-called “abortion trafficking” for minors in the state.

“This is all part of a scare campaign to make people afraid that if they go out of state and get an abortion, that they or their loved ones might be sued,” Hearron said. “We really want to emphasize that people should not be intimidated.”

Temple University Beasley School of Law Dean Rachel Rebouché called Davis’ legal maneuver “bizarre and concerning” but said it was not “surprising.”

“I think that we’ll see much more of this in the years to come, so long as Dobbs is in the books. And, frankly, this is exactly the type of example we should point to when we talk about when the Supreme Court should overturn Dobbs,” Rebouché told CNN.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com

[serious2020]

In the Post-Roe Era, Letting Pregnant Patients Get Sicker—by Design | The New Yorker

Fearing legal repercussions, doctors in Texas say they are risking grave patient harm to comply with new abortion restrictions. — Read on www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/in-the-post-roe-era-letting-pregnant-patients-get-sicker-by-design

[probablyasocialecologist]

We are living in a moment of serious gender revanchism in the United States. Feminists who self-define as “gender critical” and are otherwise openly transphobic will object to the comparison, but it is striking how much the movement to criminalize gender-affirming care for young people shares with the movement to criminalize abortion. Both find their fiercest champions in white, religious, conservative men who dismiss the evidence put forward by medical professionals that the treatment in question saves lives. Both claim to speak on behalf of silenced “children,” be they conveniently unborn or too young to be taken at their word. Both struggled to find widespread support until a father took his crusade on the road: abortion was not “an Evangelical issue” before Dr. Francis Schaeffer, a charismatic pastor, promoted his son Frank’s 1979 anti-abortion film Whatever Happened to the Human Race?; and anti-trans legislation was initially “hard to sell,” according to the Texas Tribune, until a North Texas dad named Jeff Younger built a sympathetic following online by accusing his ex-wife, a pediatrician, of wanting to “chemically castrate” their trans daughter. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s order that citizens report parents of transgender kids to the authorities so that they can be investigated for child abuse echoes the section in SB 8 that rewards vigilante citizens for reporting abortion providers to authorities. Both movements have become central to the Republican Party’s strategy to raise funds and win elections. Not least, both movements have forced pregnant and trans people to prove, in preordained terms, their absolute certainty that they need the treatment they say they do. As the opposition puts up resistance in the form of misinformation, mandatory waiting periods, sonograms, and extensive psychological testing, patients lose precious time as hormonal processes they hope to forestall come closer and closer to transforming their bodies.

The experience of gender dysphoria is not identical to the experience of forced pregnancy, but it should not have to be for us to defend one another’s right to bodily autonomy as if it were our own. To respond to the heartbreak of losing Roe by further scapegoating trans people, as some cisgender feminists have done, is not only an unnecessary cruelty but a logical and political error that none of us can afford to make. There is no evidence to support the claim that inclusive language in reproductive health spaces “erases” or “harms” cis women, as Pamela Paul recently argued in the New York Times. (If anything, terms like pregnant people are more precise, as not all women are capable of pregnancy and not all pregnant people — e.g., cisgender girls under 18 — are women.) To say so anyway, with no basis in fact, is to do the far right’s work for them.

Dayna Tortorici, Your Body, My Choice The movement to criminalize abortion

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

They are killing us. I don’t know any other way to put it. Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick. Candi Miller. Amber Nicole Thurman.  And now,  Josseli Barnica—a 28-year old mother, whose smiling face in a selfie she took with her daughter made me weep as soon as I read ProPublica’s headline: “A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage.”

Josseli died in 2021, before Roe was overturned but after Texas passed SB 8. Even though she was miscarrying at just 17 weeks into her pregnancy with no chance for the fetus’ survival, doctors told Josseli they couldn’t treat her while there was still a heartbeat. By the time her Houston hospital intervened, she had spent two days with a fetus pressed up against her open cervix, exposing her to bacteria. Josseli died of a preventable infection three days later.  I am heartbroken, but more than that I am just so angry. I am angry that this young beautiful woman is dead. I am angry that her now-4 year-old daughter will grow up without a mother. I am angry that we have to live in a country where our lives are treated as disposable. And I am really, truly furious about what I know will come next.  Anti-abortion groups will rush to send out tweets and press releases with phony condolences, insisting that Texas’ law allows life-saving care. They will blame doctors for not acting quickly enough, the hospital for not giving providers clear enough guidance��even pro-choicers for ‘scaring’ doctors out of treating patients. Anything to shirk blame and to wash the blood off their hands. 

We cannot let that happen.  When Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America comes out with a statement promising that abortion bans protect women, I want you to remember that they lobbied against exceptions for women’s lives. When the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) claims that Josseli should have been given care, remember that the ‘care’ they’re referring to isn’t an abortion—but a forced c-section or vaginal labor. That’s because these groups believe abortion is never necessary to save a person’s life. They use language and push for laws accordingly.  Most of all, I want us to remember—and for all Americans to know—that these organizations and legislators knew this would happen. They knew women would suffer and die as a result of their laws and decided to pass them anyway. There is no press release or talking point that can paper over that truth: they decided our deaths were an acceptable trade-off for a political win. 

When I say that the anti-abortion movement planned for deaths like Josseli’s, I mean it literally. In October 2022, I warned that conservatives had launched a preemptive messaging campaign to blame doctors and abortion rights activists for women’s deaths. Today, two full years later, we’re watching Republicans insist that it’s not bans endangering women, but pro-choice “misinformation” about the laws.  They didn’t just plan to avoid responsibility for our deaths, though—they planned to cover them up. There is a reason that Republicans are disbanding maternal mortality review committees, or stacking them with anti-abortion activists. In Texas, where Josseli was killed, Republicans put a well-known extremist on the state's maternal death board just a few months ago: Ingrid Skop has made a career out of arguing that maternal mortality statistics can’t be trusted and that abortion bans won’t lead to maternal deaths. 

Jessica Valenti wrote in Abortion, Every Day that the anti-abortion movement is gaslighting the people about the deaths caused by strict abortion bans such as Amber Nicole Thurman and Josseli Barnica.

[monarchisms]

so for those unaware, rooster teeth's annual extra life stream this year (2023) will be on november 11th at 10 am central time. the stream is back to being 24 hours long, and the schedule has recently been posted on rt's social media accounts. with this context, this post is going to carry a more somber tone than the usual extra life posts i used to make. this is because of the hospital that rt gives their donation money to: dell children's medical center. most of the links going forward are to articles from news sites i read through to gather and cross-reference any public information i can find to make sure what i'm sharing is accurate. general content warning for transphobia ahead.

in late april and early may, news started coming out that ken paxton, a texas attorney general, announced an investigation to "determine whether it [dell children's] is "unlawfully" providing certain gender-affirming medical care to minors." he made a statement about it on the 5th of may, and allegedly, said investigation was sparked by a video in mid-april shared by far-right activist group project veritas. i'm not linking the video directly because the group has a history of video manipulation and general disinformation throughout its existence, and i'm not a fan of, frankly speaking, spreading their bullshit, but it's linked in the nbc article for further context.

anyways, an alleged employee in that video claimed that patients at the hospital were provided gender-affirming treatment, and started to medically transition around the ages of 8 or 9 years old. dell children's official statement was shared around a week after the project veritas video was published, basically refuting the claim and explicitly stating that the hospital "prohibits surgery and prescribing hormone therapy for the treatment of gender dysphoria for children". they also note that they were "conducting a thorough review of this situation." as a result, many patients and their parents "began hearing that appointments with the hospital’s adolescent medicine specialists had been canceled and that their providers no longer worked at the hospital", leaving families to find another health provider in the state or consider looking into out-of-state resources and doctors for a better chance at receiving care. i didn't find a source that specified if those whose were no longer at dell children's chose to quit or were involuntarily fired, but it's still unfortunate either way.

keep in mind that like rooster teeth, dell children's is based in austin, texas, and the state of texas (especially within the last year) has a history of transphobia and general lgbtphobia with laws that have been proposed and/or put into effect. one of those laws that went into effect was senate bill sb 14, which went into effect on september 1st, and outlaws minors (those under 18 years old) from receiving hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and general gender-affirming care from medical professionals, as well as disallowing said professionals from prescribing care or performing surgeries to the patients.

now, the reason i typed all of this in the first place is that as far as i know (please tell me if i'm wrong here), rt hasn't made a public statement about this whole thing, nor has it been stated that they decided to give money to another hospital, or keep everything as is. i saw no one here on tumblr talking about it, and i didn't want to keep quiet myself, so i tried to make this as thorough as possible. i made a post last year noting that you can donate your money to your local hospital or donate through another individual or organization other that rt on the official extra life website. that also applies to this year's event.

whatever you decide to do or not do, always make sure to do your research on reputable, verified organizations. if you're donating your well-earned money somewhere, be confident that it's somewhere you can trust.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

A year after SB-8 went into effect and Roe was overturned, Texas enacted another, more restrictive law – banning all abortion from conception except when the mother's life was in immediate danger

"Start getting your facts right you shit"

SB-8 prevents abortion after a heartbeat. Not as an entirety. Again. Kindly stop lying.

[leohtttbriar]

Amarillo is the biggest Texas locality, so far, to consider the policy as a ballot measure—making this perhaps the most significant chance for ordinary Texas residents to vote on abortion rights since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. Statewide, voters may never get the chance to protect abortion rights as they have in Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio and might in at least 10 other states this November. This is because Texas is among the two dozen states that do not allow citizen-initiated statewide ballot measures, something only the GOP-controlled Legislature could change. 

[...]

“Generally, we don’t allow states to reach outside of their borders and regulate activity in another state,” said Liz Sepper, a University of Texas at Austin professor who specializes in healthcare law. “It’s even more suspect for a city to try and enforce its moral code outside its boundaries well beyond what the state has even done.” 

However, there is a “complex gray area” that could be open to a loophole, said Sepper. For instance, in his concurring opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that overturned Roe, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that patients could not be prosecuted for out-of-state abortions under the constitutional right to interstate travel, yet he failed to address the civil enforcement strategy found in the travel bans. Additionally, that private enforcement framework helps shield the bans from federal lawsuits seeking to block them, as is also the case with SB 8. 

When confronted with the possible unconstitutionality of the ordinance, Dickson and his anti-abortion cohort often cite the federal Mann Act, a 1910 law—accused of being used as a tool of racially motivated persecution in the mid-20th century—that was originally intended to criminalize the transport of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”

“These prohibitions on abortion trafficking no more infringe the constitutional right to travel than prohibitions on sex trafficking infringe the constitutional right to travel,” said Dickson. 

Regardless, the ordinance would likely create a chilling effect on those traveling out of state for care—and advocates say that’s by design. SB 8’s similar vigilante-style enforcement created the risk of potential litigation against anyone supporting care, which immediately halted abortion in Texas, causing damage even before legal pushback. “Like with SB 8, the point is to create fear,” said Sepper. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution

* * * * *

No More Mifepristone

Joyce Vance

On the Friday before Easter, just after the end of the workweek in Texas, a federal judge in Amarillo decided that Mifepristone, one of two key drugs used for medicated abortion, should be banned. This despite 20 years of data showing it’s safe and effective. Mifepristone has a lower rate of complications than Tylenol.

The judge also entered a stay, which means his order won’t go into effect for seven days. He did it to give the government an opportunity to appeal. But if neither the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, deeply conservative after a tranche of Trump appointments, nor the Supreme Court orders a lengthier extension, legal access to Mifepristone will come to an end. Not just in Texas, but nationwide.

The government didn’t need seven days. It filed its appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals a few hours after the decision.

DOJ was prepared to file immediately because they understood the inevitable ruling in this case. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who the plaintiffs judge-shopped for by filing this case in the Amarillo division where virtually all cases are assigned to him, has a background of deep antagonism to letting pregnant people make their own decisions. Kacsmaryk’s legal ruling affects the entire country, not just Texas. A federal district judge in Washington State entered a ruling ordering the FDA to keep Mifepristone on the market, just moments after the Texas ruling. But Kacsmaryk entered a nationwide injunction that rescinds the FDA’s approval of Mifepristone nationwide—even in states where abortion is still legal and without exception for the mother’s health.

That’s not the legal landscape the Supreme Court said it was creating when it ended 50 years of abortion rights under Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case. When the Court decided Dobbs, it said decisions about whether and under what circumstances abortion should be legal would be left up to each state. But now, Judge Kacsmaryk has made that decision for all of us—you and me, for our mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and friends, regardless of medical necessity or our personal religious and moral beliefs. Judge Kacsmaryk knows best.

Challenged legal rulings are typically stayed to preserve the status quo while appeals work their way through the courts. But the post-Trump, uber-conservative Supreme Court has always had a different jurisprudence when it comes to abortion, permitting restrictive measures like Texas’s SB-8 vigilante-justice law to go into effect while the appeal was pending. Nothing says “result-oriented” like special rules for anti-abortion litigants (to say nothing of reversing the long-standing precedent of Roe that had worked well to balance rights and did not meet the Court’s test for when precedent should be reversed). It’s tempting to think the Court might decide the Mifepristone decision is a bridge too far, if not based on legal principles and the expectations it set when it decided Dobbs, then out of purely pragmatic political considerations some of Justice Clarence Thomas’s billionaire friends might want to see in order to avoid steep Republican losses at the polls following yet another anti-abortion decision. But it’s difficult to imagine this Court walking it back so close to its goal of extinguishing abortion rights. DOJ has strong arguments to make on appeal—compelling ones on threshold issues like whether the plaintiffs had standing to bring this case, as well as on the merits. Whether the Court will give them a fair hearing is an entirely different matter.

Soon we’ll find out if the Court meant it when it said abortion would be up to the states. Or if one judge in Texas can resurrect the long-disfavored Comstock Act and terminate people’s rights across America. The Act is an 1873 law that makes it illegal to advertise or mail anything, including information, related to preventing contraception or producing abortion (as well as outlawing sending “obscene, lewd or lascivious,” “immoral,” or “indecent” publications). The Comstock Act fell into disuse because of its effect on First Amendment rights—it involves prior restraint by the government on speech. The prohibition on materials and items related to contraception was removed after the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which held that Connecticut’s “mini-Comstock” law unconstitutionally invaded the privacy rights of married couples. Be concerned about where a resuscitation of this law could lead.

Restricting abortion today does not seem to be about good-faith conservative values and protecting the sanctity of life. It’s hard to believe that a party that denies access to basic medical care and education and that lets schoolkids die at the hands of mass shooters in the name of the Second Amendment is deeply committed to unborn children, unless it’s become somehow morally righteous to protect them only until they leave the womb. Ending abortion is a political rallying cry, used to bring voters to the polls and raise money, with a healthy side effect of owning uppity liberal women.

It’s really not that difficult: If you’re against abortion, don’t get one. We live in a pluralistic society and there are religions other than conservative Christianity, for instance Judaism, that command their followers to protect the life of a mother over that of an unborn fetus. Somehow their rights are now ignored, while a minority that has gained control of the Supreme Court dictates to the rest of us.

Interestingly, banning Mifepristone isn’t just part of the trend to make abortion less available; it’s also part of the trend to make it less safe and to endanger women’s lives. I spoke with Jesanna Cooper, a friend and a doctor in Birmingham, who is an experienced Ob-Gyn. She told me, “The take-home is that without mifepristone, more people will hemorrhage and/or get septic from incomplete expulsion of the products of conception.” Using Misoprostol, the other drug used in a medication abortion procedure, alone is “less effective,” she says. It involves the “same amount of pain but [is] more likely to be incomplete, which can be dangerous.” It doesn’t sound very pro-life.

More information about the two drugs, if you want to read some of the science, is here.

In 1996 then-Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D-CO) tried to convince the House to take the Comstock Act off the books. They didn’t. But her floor speech has resonance today. She explained that the Act was named for a man named Anthony Comstock, who “was one of these people who decided only he knew what was virtuous and right, and somehow he managed to convince all sorts of people that this was correct.” That sounds familiar.

She continued, “Anthony Comstock was a religious fanatic who spent his life in a personal crusade for moral purity—as defined, of course, by himself. This crusade resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a multitude of Americans whose only crime was to exercise their constitutional right of free speech in ways that offended Anthony Comstock. Women seemed to particularly offend Anthony Comstock, most particularly women who believed in the right to plan their families through the use of contraceptives, or in the right of women to engage in discussions and debate about matters involving sexuality, including contraception and abortion.” We don’t need a new Anthony Comstock, and we don’t need Judge Kacsmaryk to dictate health care—or the absence of it—to people across the country.

You know what the solution is: go vote. Democrats will need sufficient majorities in both houses of Congress to restore protections for abortion. It’s not enough to win the House or the Senate; Democrats must take both to ensure access to abortion, and 2024 is not that far off.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

[Civil Discourse With Joyce Vance]

[ejacutastic]

A Texas man, Marcus Silva, is suing three of his ex-wife’s friends for $1 million each, claiming that by helping her obtain an abortion medication, they engaged in a wrongful death conspiracy. Silva is being represented by Jonathan Mitchell, one of the architects of the SB 8 anti-abortion “bounty hunter” bill.

Text messages revealed from the lawsuit, showing that the woman was afraid Silva would use the pregnancy to force her back into a relationship, seem to confirm activists’ warnings that abortion bans will enable widespread domestic abuse.

The lawsuit describes a nightmare scenario faced by women across the country. The woman in question legally divorced Silva in February 2022. In July, she discovered she was pregnant with a child conceived with Silva. She reached out to friends via text for help.

Text messages from the lawsuit show that the woman was struggling with a crisis. If she kept the baby, her ex-husband would use it to force her back into the relationship she had just escaped. “I know either way he will use it against me,” she wrote.

“If I told him before, which I’m not, he would use it [to] try to stay with me. And after the fact, I know he will try to act like he has some right to the decision. At that point, at least it won’t matter though.”

Her friends texted, “Mistakes happen … You can’t spiral. Hopefully this is the slap in the body that you need to remove yourself from him.”

Further texts seem to indicate that the friends helped her obtain an abortion medication, for which she expressed her gratitude: “[Y]our help means the world to me … I[‘]m so lucky to have y’all. Really … I was stupid to be doing it all. I didn’t think this would happen since it hasn’t in 7 f—— years either. But it’s still on me. I know I f—– up. Not letting that s— happen again.”

Silva and his lawyer, Mitchell, did in fact “use it against” his ex as she feared by suing the friends for obscene amounts of money and claiming that they committed murder.

Under Texas’ extreme and layered anti-abortion laws, domestic abusers, anti-abortion activists and even complete strangers have a full legal arsenal at their disposal to attack abortion rights. People who perform abortion face potential felony charges of up to life in prison and civil penalties of at least $100,000. In addition, SB 8, the “bounty hunter” bill, enables anyone to sue someone for a minimum of $10,000 for performing or facilitating an abortion.

In Silva’s case, he is pursuing a different legal attack, claiming that the abortion is a murder and pursuing wrongful death civil penalties. Silva also intends to add the manufacturer of the medication to the lawsuit, a similar strategy to the lawsuit that may lead to the banning of abortion pills nationwide.

The government of Texas and anti-abortion groups are throwing every possible legal challenge at abortion, hoping to use these cases as testing grounds to unroll new mechanisms for stopping abortion across the country. At the same time, they are exporting their successful anti-abortion strategies — such as “bounty bills” — to be used against drag shows and LGBTQ people.

But activists across the state are not allowing this to go unchallenged.

Dora Orjel, of the San Antonio-based Mujeres Marcharán Coalition, exposed the dangerous ramifications for domestic abuse: “I am trying to wrap my head around where he finds justice in suing those who assisted his wife in getting the means to self-abort. This just shows how much control he had and continues to have over her.”

Rachell Tucker, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, spoke out against the decades-long attack and the complacency of the Democrats, and named working-class self-organization as the way to fight back.

The rightwing has been launching an offensive on women for decades, but what’s worse is the Democrats have used our rights to abortion as a bargaining chip. They have refused to defend us. They have refused to codify and have continued to say they have our backs, but have abandoned us at the most crucial moment. They have left us to fend for ourselves. We must get organized, unify and fight — and that’s what we are doing.

For International Women’s Day on March 8, Mujeres Marcharán held a march that drew hundreds into the street to demand an expansion of abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, in addition to safe housing for all and public transportation, issues that affect all working women. In Houston, the PSL organized a women’s self-defense class; and in Dallas, PSL organizers held an event featuring poetry, speeches, live music, vendors and food. The event celebrated women and culture, but sharply connected the political struggles for women’s and LGBTQ liberation.

There is still a difficult struggle ahead, but the entire weight of Texas’ oppressive political and legal system has failed to stop the full range of rage, love, study and self-organization of grassroots, working-class feminists. All across Texas, la lucha sigue (the struggle continues)!

[coochiequeens]

It's not pro-life if Women die.

Sept. 20, 2024

By Erika Edwards, Zinhle Essamuah and Jason Kane

The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.

From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.

“There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” said Nancy L. Cohen, president of the GEPI. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.” 

“Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what’s to come in other states,” she said.

The SB 8 effect

The Texas Legislature banned abortion care as early as five weeks into pregnancy in September 2021, nearly a year before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — the case that protected a federal right to abortion — in June 2022. 

At the time, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, lauded the bill as a measure that “ensures the life of every unborn child.”

Texas law now prohibits all abortion except to save the life of the mother. 

The passage of Texas’ Senate Bill 8 gave GEPI researchers the opportunity to take an early look at how near-total bans on abortion — including cases in which the mother’s life was in danger — affected the health and safety of pregnant women. 

The SB 8 effect, Cohen’s team found, was swift and stark. Within a year, maternal mortality rose in all racial groups studied.

Maternal mortality rates in Texas

Deaths per 100,000 live births

This grouped bar chart compares maternal mortality rates among all women, Black women, Hispanic women and white women from 2019 to 2022. In all categories, rates were lowest in 2019. In most categories rates doubled from 2019 to 2021, then declined in 2022. Rates in 2022 are highest among Black women, followed by white women, all women, then Hispanic women.

Source: Gender Equity Policy Institute analysis of CDC data

Among Hispanic women, the rate of women dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after increased from 14.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 18.9 in 2022. Rates among white women nearly doubled — from 20 per 100,000 to 39.1. And Black women, who historically have higher chances of dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after, saw their rates go from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births. While maternal mortality spiked overall during the pandemic, women dying while pregnant or during childbirth rose consistently in Texas following the state’s ban on abortion, according to the Gender Equity Policy Institute.

“If you deny women abortions, more women are going to be pregnant, and more women are going to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term,” Cohen said.

Beyond the immediate dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, there is growing evidence that women living in states with strict abortion laws, such as Texas, are far more likely to go without prenatal care and much less likely to find an appointment with an OB-GYN.

Doctors say the feeling among would-be moms is fear.

“Fear is something I’d never seen in practice prior to Senate Bill 8,” said Dr. Leah Tatum, an OB-GYN in private practice in Austin, Texas. Tatum, who was not involved with the GEPI study, said that requests for sterilization procedures among her patients doubled after the state’s abortion ban.

That is, women prefer to lose their ability to ever have children over the chance that they might become pregnant following SB 8.

“Patients feel like they’re backed into a corner,” Tatum said. “If they already knew that they didn’t want to pursue pregnancy, now they’re terrified.”

Tatum said she’s seeing many women in their late 30s and 40s who, even though they’d like to have a child, worry they wouldn��t have an option to end the pregnancy if it turned out that the baby wouldn’t be born healthy. “‘What happens if I end up with a genetically abnormal fetus?’” Tatum said her patients have asked her. They worry their options are limited, she said. ‘Treated like a criminal’

That unthinkable tragedy happened to Kaitlyn Kash, 37, of Austin, Texas. 

Kash had a textbook pregnancy with her first child, a healthy little boy, born in 2018. 

“It’d been so easy the first time,” she said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would go down the journey that we went down.”

When she became pregnant again, it wasn’t until Kash’s second trimester, at 13 weeks, that she and her husband, Cory, discovered that their fetus had severe skeletal dysplasia, a rare genetic disorder affecting bone and cartilage growth. It was highly unlikely the baby would survive. 

Kaitlyn Kash and her husband, Cory, at home with their two children.NBC News

“We were told that his bones would break in utero and he would suffocate at birth,” Kash said. “We were expecting our doctor to tell us how we were going to care for our baby, how we were going to end his pain.”It was October 2021, just a month after Texas passed the SB 8 abortion law. 

“We were told that we should get a second opinion, but make sure that it was outside of Texas,” she said. 

At 15 weeks, Kash had to travel to Kansas to terminate her doomed pregnancy. Outside the medical clinic, protesters harassed the grief-stricken mom. 

“I was being treated like a criminal,” she said. “I didn’t get the dignity that I deserved to say goodbye to my child.”

“It’s just another example of how it’s heartbreaking to practice in the state of Texas,” Tatum said. “These patients are asking for help. The state of Texas has failed women.”

CORRECTION (Sept. 21, 2024, 8:17 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the maternal mortality rates by demographic. The figures represent the number per 100,000 live births, not percentages.

Erika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and "TODAY."

Jason Kane is a producer in the NBC News Health & Medical Unit. 

[beardedmrbean]

Afederal judge has blocked a California gun law that emulated a controversial Texas abortion measure — and which was intended to provoke a court fight.

The injunction from Judge Roger Benitez sets California’s law, which enables private citizens to sue manufacturers of illegal guns, on a potential path to the U.S. Supreme Court. That could set up a test of both laws — an outcome that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has sought.

“I want to thank Judge Benitez. We have been saying all along that Texas’ anti-abortion law is outrageous. Judge Benitez just confirmed it is also unconstitutional," Newsom said in a statement Monday. "The provision in California’s law that he struck down is a replica of what Texas did, and his explanation of why this part of SB 1327 unfairly blocks access to the courts applies equally to Texas’ SB 8."

Benitez also underscored the ties between the two laws in his ruling, citing Newsom’s condemnations of the Texas measure that deputizes citizens to sue abortion providers as evidence that the California gun law is unconstitutional.

"'It is cynical.' 'It is an abomination.' 'It is outrageous and objectionable.' 'There is no dispute that it raises serious constitutional questions,'" Benitez wrote at the start of his ruling, quoting Newsom on the Texas law as evidence that "by implication," the same is true of California's law.

While Benitez’s ruling argues that California’s law “goes even further” than its Texas impetus, he acknowledged that may not be enough to shield the Texas measure from “judicial scrutiny.” That could yield the outcome Newsom has hinted at by essentially daring the U.S. Supreme Court to nullify the California measure after it let the Texas abortion restrictions stand.

“The question is whether they are complete and abject hypocrites and frauds if they reject our bill that’s modeled after that abortion bill as it relates to private right of action to go after assault weapons,” Newsom said last year.

That strategy could backfire. The conservative-majority court has already shown an expansive view of gun rights, including in a case that nullified California’s stringent concealed carry permitting rules.

The ruling also adds to Benitez’s antagonistic relationship with Newsom. The San Diego-based judge has struck down multiple gun regulations during Newsom’s tenure, including ammunition restrictions that Newsom championed and California’s longstanding ban on assault weapons.

In striking down the assault weapons ban, Benitez compared AR-15 rifles to Swiss Army Knives — drawing a furious response from Newsom, who excoriated the judge as a “wholly-owned subsidiary of the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association.”

[dankusner]

Galveston man drops lawsuit against women who allegedly helped his ex-wife get an abortion

Almost two years ago, a Galveston man sued his ex-wife’s friends for wrongful death of a fetus for allegedly helping her obtain pills to terminate her pregnancy.

The first-of-its-kind lawsuit set off a panic about a potential new avenue of abortion criminalization in post-Roe v. Wade America.

On Thursday, the claims were dropped with nothing to show for them.

This shocking test case was filed by Jonathan Mitchell, an anti-abortion legal crusader responsible for Texas’ novel ban on abortions through private lawsuits.

That gambit, commonly known as SB 8, survived a court challenge.

This wrongful death suit, which demanded $1 million from the two women for their “murderous actions,” did not.

Mitchell filed a notice of non-suit Thursday night asking the court to dismiss all of the claims and close the case, just as it was preparing to go to trial.

The filing does not say why they dropped the claims, and Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The original lawsuit alleged that Jackie Noyola and Amy Carpenter helped their friend obtain abortion-inducing medication after she found out she was pregnant by her soon-to-be ex-husband Marcus Silva.

The women countersued, alleging Silva knew about the abortion and did nothing to stop it.

Silva’s ex-wife, who was not a party to either lawsuit, previously asked the court to dismiss the claims or at least not require her to produce documents or testify.

She introduced text messages that allegedly show Silva using the threat of the lawsuit to try to get back together.

“So now he’s saying if I don’t give him my ‘mind body and soul’ until the end of the divorce which he’s going to drag out, he’s going to make sure I go to jail for [getting the abortion],” she said in a text message to her friends.

The case was preparing to go to trial this month after several continuances.

In a statement, Noyola said she was grateful it was dismissed, but “angry” that it had been brought in the first place.

“After two years of being entangled in Mitchell and Silva’s campaign of abusive litigation, we were ready to fight this baseless suit in court,” Carpenter said in a statement.

“But the claims were dropped because they had nothing. We did nothing wrong, and we would do it all again. ”

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Texas man abandons suit against women

He claimed murder, sued 3 who helped ex-wife get abortion

A Texas man who sued three women for allegedly helping his ex-wife obtain abortion pills has dropped his claims — prompting abortion rights advocates to declare victory in the first case of its kind to be brought since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

The lawsuit, filed in state court in Galveston County in March 2023, claimed that helping someone obtain an abortion qualifies as murder under the state’s homicide law and the abortion ban that took effect shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, allowing a Texas man to sue under the wrongful-death statute.

The man, Marcus Silva, had been seeking at least $1 million in damages from each of the defendants.

Silva, who identified himself as the “father of the unborn child,” agreed to drop the case late Thursday after several different state courts refused to compel his ex-wife and the three defendants to provide additional information.

One Texas Supreme Court justice called attention to what he described as Silva’s “disgracefully vicious harassment and intimidation of his ex-wife.”

[conservative justices, Jimmy Blacklock and Phillip Devine.]

Silva could not be reached for comment Friday.

One of his attorneys, Briscoe Cain, said “the parties have executed a settlement agreement and all claims and counterclaims have been dismissed.”

Amy Carpenter, one of the defendants, told The Washington Post that the lawsuit had been “a disgusting abuse of power.”

“You can’t use the legal system to bully and harass your victims,” she added. “You won’t win.”

‘Notice of non-suit’

There was no money exchanged in connection with Silva’s decision to drop the case, Carpenter said.

The resolution of the case was announced late Thursday in a one-page filing under the headline, “notice of non-suit.”

As the use of abortion pills has spiked in the wake of the U.S.

Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe, anti-abortion advocates have been grasping for ways to crack down on the medications, which have continued to flow freely through the mail into all 50 states, including states with strict abortion bans.

Silva’s case was the first lawsuit targeting those who help facilitate a medication abortion in a state where abortion is illegal.

National abortion rights groups spoke out in support of the defendants, describing the case as an attempt to deter women in anti-abortion states from seeking abortion pills.

“The bigger picture is that this was a very high-profile attempt to use the civil justice system to go after abortion pill distribution post-Dobbs, and it failed,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University who specializes in abortion issues.

If the case had gone forward, he added, “it could have sent a message to people obtaining pills … that they are at risk.”

‘I felt just numb’

Carpenter and Jackie Noyola, a second defendant in the case, said they first heard about the case in March 2023 when they started receiving messages from media and lawyers offering to represent them.

They immediately started Googling around.

Reading the complaint, they said, they were shocked to see their names in the same sentence as the phrase, “conspired … to murder” an “unborn child.”

“I felt just numb in that moment,” said Noyola.

“Like, wait why is there the word ‘murder’ next to my name in so many places?”

Soon after that, Silva attempted to serve the two women at their jobs, they said. “It felt gross,” Carpenter said. “You feel like you have safe places where no one is going to access you.” 24073602

Silva was represented by two prominent conservative attorneys — Jonathan Mitchell, widely known as the architect of a novel 2021 Texas abortion ban, and Cain, a Republican member of the Texas House.

After filing the lawsuit on Silva’s behalf, Mitchell, who declined to comment, has since filed legal action probing several other women who obtained abortions in the wake of Roe, including one who obtained an abortion in a state where abortion remains legal.

Silva alleged that in July 2022, when the couple were still married, his wife found out she was pregnant but concealed it from him.

His lawsuit claimed that two of the defendants had exchanged text messages with Silva’s wife, discussing how and where she could obtain the medication to end her pregnancy.

A third defendant arranged for the delivery of the medication, the complaint alleged.

“We have pills here in Houston,” read a message that one of the women shared with the group, according to the complaint.

“So no you wouldn’t have to fly. You could get them from us or your could order some online.”

Silva’s complaint included as exhibits many of the text messages allegedly exchanged among the group of women.

In the texts, one woman shares information provided by an organization that ships abortion pills and says the woman can take them at her home.

“Your help means the world to me,” responds Silva’s ex-wife, who is exempt from civil and criminal liability under Texas law.

“Im so lucky to have y’all.”

Carpenter and Noyola said they had not been affiliated with any abortion rights advocacy groups before the lawsuit.

They were just trying to help out a friend, they said.

Silva and his ex-wife divorced shortly before the lawsuit was filed, according to the court documents.

During the course of the lawsuit, Mitchell tried to obtain wide-ranging discovery, including all communications the defendants had with each other and with Silva’s ex-wife.

Those attempts were also ultimately unsuccessful.

Silva’s ex-wife shared with the court transcripts of recordings of the verbal abuse she said she experienced from Silva ahead of the lawsuit being filed, including threats to persecute her if she didn’t have sex with him and do his laundry, according to court records.

He also threatened to send sex videos of her to her employer and her family and friends, according to the transcripts.

‘No legitimate excuse’

In a concurring opinion with a lower court’s decision not to compel Silva’s ex-wife to provide additional information, one justice on the Texas Supreme Court condemned Silva’s behavior.

“I can imagine no legitimate excuse for Marcus’s behavior as reflected in this record, many of the details of which are not fit for reproduction in a judicial opinion,” wrote the justice, Jimmy Blacklock, who was appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Carpenter and Noyola filed a countersuit against Silva in May 2023, a few months after the original lawsuit was filed.

They argued that Silva knew about his ex-wife’s plans to have an abortion before she took the pills, but did nothing to stop her — a move they said showcased the true nature of his lawsuit against them.

When discussions about a settlement began this week, Carpenter and Noyola said, they emphasized to their lawyers the importance of being able to speak out about what happened to them.

Man drops abortion pill lawsuit

Case would have been the first tried under new Texas law

A Texas man who sued three women for helping his ex-wife obtain abortion pills agreed to drop the lawsuit just days before a trial was set to start, marking the end of a key test case for private enforcement of state abortion bans.

Galveston County resident Marcus Silva sued three friends of his ex-wife Brittni Silva under wrongful death claims in March 2023, marking the first such case under Texas’ near-total abortion ban.

While the abortion took place in July 2022, before the state’s “trigger law” took effect, the lawsuit claimed the women violated a state law that forbids nonphysicians from administering abortion pills.

The trigger law banned all abortions after fertilization in late August 2022, soon after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.

Prominent anti-abortion attorney Jonathan Mitchell — the engineer of a 2021 Texas law that allows private residents to enforce a six-week abortion ban through lawsuits — and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, filed the original complaint on Marcus Silva’s behalf.

Both parties — Marcus Silva and the three women he sued — filed notices late Thursday asking the judge to dismiss the case, with each side agreeing to pay their own attorney’s fees.

A settlement notice from the plaintiffs, filed Friday, stipulates that the parties dropped all claims and counterclaims.

Marcus Silva alleged in his complaint that the women “conspired with Brittni to obtain abortion pills illegally and to use those illegally obtained abortion pills to murder baby Silva.”

The Silvas were still married at the time of the abortion, the complaint states.

The defendants, in response, described Marcus Silva as a “serial emotional abuser” and accused him of using evidence of the abortion to blackmail his then-wife.

They also filed counterclaims alleging that Marcus Silva unlawfully invaded his wife’s privacy and violated the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act.

Marcus Silva told police he began to suspect the abortion after searching his wife’s purse, then her phone and reading her text messages, according to a League City Police Department note cited in the legal filings.

The next day, Marcus Silva found a mifepristone pill in her purse — then put it back.

“He wasn’t interested in stopping her from terminating a possible pregnancy,” the defendants’ lawyer, Rusty Hardin, wrote in the response.

“Instead, he wanted to obtain evidence he could use against her if she refused to stay under his control, which is precisely what he tried to do.”

The response cites text messages in which Brittni Silva told friends that he was threatening to have her thrown in jail if she did not give herself to him “mind body and soul.”

The request for dismissal comes after Republican state District Judge Lonnie Cox denied Mitchell’s motion to delay a trial, which was set to begin Monday in Galveston County court.

The trial date had previously been pushed from May to October.

Cox also rejected Mitchell’s motion to compel compliance with discovery on Oct. 7.

Marcus Silva and Mitchell had attempted to compel Silva’s ex-wife to furnish further evidence in the case, but they were unable to after she invoked her right against self-incrimination, according to court filings.

The 14th Court of Appeals ruled in Brittni Silva’s favor in that matter, and the Texas Supreme Court denied Mitchell’s petition to reverse the lower court’s ruling.

Pregnant Texans who obtain abortions cannot be prosecuted or sued for the terminations under state law, though accomplices or people who perform the procedures, including physicians, can face criminal and civil penalties.

Mitchell declined to comment Friday, and Hardin did not immediately respond to an American-Statesman request for comment

[grumpygirlblog]

Who's Choice?

Throughout history, the U.S. government has enacted various regulations that have impaired women’s autonomy over their own bodies. A crucial moment occurred in 1973 with the Supreme Court decision known as Roe v. Wade. This established a constitutional right to abortion. Under the pseudonym "Jane Roe," Norma McCorvey initiated legal action against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas. McCorvey argued that Texas laws criminalizing abortion infringed upon a constitutional right to privacy. This ruling fundamentally empowered women in America by affirming their right to choose.

At the core of this decision is the principle of choice, which represents a crucial aspect of reproductive rights.

The 19th Amendment:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

In 1920, women achieved the right to vote, liberating themselves from yet another oppressive government force. Nonetheless, the struggle over women’s voting rights exists today. For instance, Congressman John Gibbs has claimed that America has "suffered" since women's suffrage and has even supported movements aimed at repealing the 19th Amendment in the early 2000s.

It is imperative for women to exercise their hard-won right to vote and advocate for a government system that genuinely represents the interests of the people rather than merely the top 1%. This right, which is fundamental to our empowerment as women, unfortunately had to be granted rather than inherently deserved.

I am using my power as a woman to vote! I have registered and plan on voting this coming November.

Click here to see if you are eligible to vote!

Click below to register to vote!

Olivia Julianna is a 19-year-old Abortion rights activist. She is known for schooling many politicians on matters regarding the topic of abortion, contraception and other autonomous rights. Since she started her fight, she has raised over $2 million for abortion funds.

It is important for our country to see the younger generations involved in politics. I appreciate the humorous touch in many Gen Z's discussions regarding politics. Olivia is a perfect example of poking fun at ignorant comments while simultaneously providing correct information. She isn't taking the things that are said lightly, she is making light of the person who said it. This is engaging to our generation. She will bring us into the political scene!

The restrictive abortion laws passed reflect a significant shift in reproductive rights since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. These laws often include firm limits on when an abortion can be performed, mandatory waiting periods, and other barriers that disproportionately affect low-income individuals and marginalized communities.

As for their potential impact on the 2024 Presidential election, there’s a strong possibility these laws could mobilize voters, especially those who support reproductive rights. The backlash against restrictive policies could encourage both pro-choice advocates and moderate voters who may see these laws as extreme. The issue could significantly influence voter turnout and preferences in crucial states.

Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The state enacted Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) in 2021, which bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. This period is before many individuals even realize they are pregnant. This law gives private citizens the right to sue anyone who performs or aids in an abortion.

Additionally, Texas has faced legal challenges regarding its abortion laws, and access to reproductive healthcare remains severely limited. The state has also implemented various barriers, including mandatory waiting periods and counseling that can include misleading information.

Overall, the situation in Texas exemplifies the broader trend of restrictive abortion legislation in the U.S. and highlights the controversial nature of reproductive rights as a critical political issue leading into the 2024 election.

Moral of the story ...

GO VOTE!!!!!!

[saltykingsalty]

[The fetishization of trans bodies

According to their annual year in review, PornHub reported that transgender porn consumption rose 75% to become the 3rd most popular category in the U.S.

This comes at the same time as an unprecented increase in anti trans rhetoric, violence, and the introduction of over 300 anti trans bills in state legislatures

A recent lawsuit.org study revealed the states where trans porn is most searched also are typically those which have introduced anti trans bills. Texas ranks #1 and also has some of the most draconian anti trans laws in the nation.

TOP 20 STATES THAT SEARCH FOR TRANS PORN

1. TEXAS, 2. GEORGIA, 3. KENTUCKY, 4. MISSOURI, 5. KANSAS, 6. VIRGINIA, 7. NORTH CAROLINA, 8. ILLINOIS, 9. MISSISSIPPI, 10. TENNESSEE, 11. OHIO, 12. INDIANA, 13. ARKANSAS, 14. IOWA, 15. LOUISIANA, 16. MICHIGAN, 17. OKLAHOMA, 18. ALABAMA, 19. FLORIDA, 20. PENNSYLVANIA

During an episode of his InfoWars show, Alex Jones was promoting how to buy his vitamin supplements via his phone when he inadvertently revealed his internet history to have recently included viewing an adult video featuring a trans actress.

Jones has routinely disparaged transgender people, including saying they "persecute one of the only human cultures left."

Last year, Alabama state senator, Tom Whatley voted in favor of SB-10 to criminalize gender affirming care.

Last year, Alabama state senator, Tom Whatley voted in favor of SB-10 to criminalize gender affirming care.

As a trans woman, I could not care less whether or not someone is interested in us sexually. Or what they watch..

What I do care about is when trans people have been fetishized to the point they're dehumanized. When others no longer see us as people, but merely objects for their own purposes -- be it sexual or political, often times overlapping -- results can be dangerous.

Porn isn't real. But for many, it's their main source of exposure to a small, marginalized community. Trans people make up 1% of the population yet are the 3rd most popular category of adult entertainment.

That discrepancy contributes to the very stigma used to drive anti trans narratives and paint gender noncomfority as inherently sexual (when it's not). Some of the very people stoking the fires are those who find themselves (secretly) attracted to the people they (publicly) disparage.

It's not a coincidence.

(screenshots of search results:

Does sex with a trans woman make me gay?

I'm confused about sexuality because of TS porn. I consider myself a straight

What Happens When Your Girlfriend Finds Out You're into Trans Women)

There's a huge intersection of homophobia and transphobia. Many men, in particular, have a fear of being perceived as anything other than straight, as if such a prospect is a threat to their very masculinity and will draw the ire of their bros or make them undateable by cis women.

And whether or not being interested in a trans person is straight/bi/gay/etc, IT SHOULDN'T MATTER.

But to many it does, either due to a fear of being stigmatized themselves or because they wish to still callously deride the lgbt community.

And that matters, because it has real consequences.

Like who and what you like.

But don't retroactively turn your fantasies into shameful overt actions to punish groups of people who have nothing to do with what you like when no ones watching.

The effects of a society that stigmatizes trans people has on those interested in them in turn continues to contribute to that very stigma, creating a feedback loop of persistant transphobia.

"It's important that we begin truly accepting trans women as who they are, women. We are not objects to have secret sex with, to discard and to laugh at on the radio or the gossip blogosphere. We are worthy of being seen and are not dirty or shameful. Until we begin checking how we delegitimize the identities, bodies and existence of trans women and stigmatize the men who yearn to be with us, we will continue to marginalize our sisters, pushing them further into socially-sanctioned invisibility, left in the dark to fend for themselves with men who are don't have the space to explore, define and embrace their attraction to various women."

- Filmmaker Janet Mock (writer/ producer of "Pose").]

IG: no.tears.left.anymore

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Amee Vanderpool at SHERO:

A study published in June, led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers, has concluded that in the year following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion, infant deaths in Texas increased more than expected, especially among infants with congenital anomalies.  The analysis of monthly death certificate data in Texas and the rest of the United States by the John Hopkins team following the enactment of the SB8 Texas law, that prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat could be detected that went into effect September 1, 2021, found that between 2021 and 2022 infant deaths in Texas rose from 1,985 to 2,240. The study defined infants as under 12 months of age, and this reported number represents a year-over-year increase of 255 total infant deaths. The report revealed that the State of Texas had a 12.95% increase during this time in infant deaths, as compared to an average 1.8% increase in infant deaths throughout the entire country. The investigation, which was was led by John Hopkins assistant professors in Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Suzanne Bell and Alison Gemmill, ultimately determined that Texas Heartbeat ban “led directly to immediate and significant decreases in facility-based abortions provided in Texas.” This lack of resources created more requests for medication abortion pills so that patients could self-manage an abortion, and ultimately caused greater than expected live births among people residing in Texas.

Gemmill and Bell used Texas birth certificate data and compared it to several other states in order to determine what would have happened to infant mortality in Texas in the absence of this policy. Professor Gemmill commented on the findings saying, “The big takeaway is that we found an unexpected increase in infant mortality in Texas—about a 13% increase—that wasn't observed in the rest of the United States [and] this suggests that SB-8 was driving this increase in infant mortality.” “We saw similar findings with neonatal mortality, which are deaths of infants less than 28 days old,” Gemmill continued, “and then we also found — which was a bit surprising — that deaths due to congenital anomalies rose by 23% in Texas, while in the rest of the United States, there was a decrease in these deaths.” Professor Gemmill went on to explain that the congenital abnormality increase in Texas was due to the heightened medical restrictions and a lack of options for the patient.  

[...] Currently, at least 13 states have complete abortion bans with few exceptions for things like fetal anomalies, and another seven states have abortion restrictions pre-viability and in some cases, many weeks before we would even be able to test for congenital malformations. Both professors expect that in these places with extreme abortion restrictions, we can expect to “see something similar play out” where abortion has been banned. While studies up to now have focused on the health impacts for women who have been denied emergency medical care as a result of these abortion bans all over the country, this is the first study to examine the effects of restrictive abortion limitations on the deformed infants who are born as a result of improper medical care. The only thing worse than being denied access to abortion services when you are not ready to start a family, is the proposition of carrying a baby to term that you grow to love and want, that is ultimately destined to suffer and die within the first year of life.

A study done by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reveals that abortion ban law Texas SB8 is the cause of increased infant deaths in the Lone Star State.